But let's be honest now. Ethnic pride, the love of a mother and father, a commitment to the spiritual, even good genes -- those factors don't add up to a PGA golfer who made more than $1 million in his first year with victories at the Reno-Tahoe Open in August and the Michelob Championship in September. They don't explain Begay's velvet touch on the greens, nor the array of things he can do with a wedge.
That is where Don Zamora comes in.
"I raised him," he says, point-blank.
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| As a kid, Begay traded sweat labor for free golf at Ladera municipal. |
There's more than a shard of truth to that statement. Zamora for many years was director at Ladera Golf Course in Albuquerque, where Begay spent much of his youth plotting his improbable rise to the PGA Tour. The love affair began on the 14th hole of the municipal course, adjacent to the green to be exact, where Begay would sit outside his father's new house and watch some very good and mostly very bad approach shots.
The boy wanted in. "He used to come through a hole in the fence," Zamora says. "Little Note would just appear, like a puppy. Finally, his dad came around one day and said, 'My kid has a fetish for the game' and wanted to know if we could do anything about it."
The fathers of some of today's PGA Tour players probably never had to make such a request. For many who grew up on private courses, dad's membership covered greens fees, quarters were always lying around for range balls, and entry to the game was through a large wooden door at the front of the clubhouse, not some tear in the fence.
Yet, that is the fallacy of private courses and rich kids: That they necessarily team up to make a better golfer. The tour is full of players like Fred Couples and Carlos Franco, the other top contender for Rookie of the Year honors, who grew up without wealth and on courses in which the fairways aren't as pristine, the local instruction not as distinguished, as what might be found at a country club.
Begay merely had fewer advantages than most muni kids. His parents are comfortable now -- his father is a computer specialist with Indian Health Services, his mother a program manager for Native American culture who works with juvenile delinquents. But Begay grew up in the kind of lower-middle class family in which hand-me-down clothes were a given and Fridays were spent hoping that today's paycheck went through in time to cover the bank note mom put in the mail on Wednesday.
"I would never say I was poor, because I know people who were a lot worse off than I was," Begay says. "We just didn't have the luxury to do some things."
So, in exchange for golf balls and practice time, Begay woke up at 5 a.m. to move carts, wash range balls and generally serve as Zamora's all-purpose gopher until sunset. When he got good enough to play in national juniors tournaments, he did whatever was required to get there, even if a bus ticket was all his family could afford. He flew to North Carolina alone when he was 14.
Zamora, his de facto travel agent, often had a phone to his ear during those years, calling on a network of former golfing associates to open their homes to Begay when tournaments came to their towns. His pitch: Help a good kid.
"When he was 12, I was more concerned about how he treated people than whether he was going to be a star," Zamora says. "All I wanted was for the people he stayed with to say, 'What a nice kid.' " Which they did, and soon, Begay had his own Holiday Inn chain with a nightly rate of $0.
A couple years ago, Zamora went to his rolodex again for Begay, who had lost control of his driver after trying to change the fundamentals of his swing. Zamora's friend Bryan Gathwright, a local pro in San Antonio, helped straighten Begay out by encouraging him to reconcile with his original swing. Begay surged, finishing 10th on the Nike Tour last year, qualifying him for the PGA Tour.
Now President Clinton wants to play with Begay. After his first tour victory, Begay was asked if he could play a round with the commander-in-chief.
Schedule's too tight, Begay told Clinton's people.
So chalk one up for municipal courses everywhere. Notah Begay is their victory. Zamora used to think kids from country clubs had all the advantages. But Begay, whose homemade swing may as well be a badge of honor, has proven otherwise.
"You just have to have friends willing to help you," Zamora says.
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Notah Begay